The phone call only lasted a few minutes. Courteous but firm because the Minister of Economy calls for the second time in three months the president of the Swiss group ABB, Peter Voser. This Wednesday, July 30, Éric Lombard insists: the French government does not want the French group Legrand to pass into foreign hands. In previous weeks, the CEO of the electrical systems specialist, Benoit Coquart, contacted the minister’s office and the Treasury Department to alert them.
Its Swiss rival, ABB, has been trying to buy it for more than six months. Already in December 2024, CEO Morten Wierod calls his Legrand counterpart for a first contact. His message is simple:
The Frenchman carries out electrical installations for data centers, especially in the United States, and this profession is booming. ABB also operates in these businesses and wants to invest more.
ABB, an industrial giant three times bigger than Legrand
Given this attitude, currently friendly, Benoit Coquart refuses to start conversations. He wants Legrand to remain independent. It has just presented a strategic plan for 2030 that its investors have welcomed. Billing should grow 10% annually thanks to data center activity.
But ABB persists in taking a more direct approach. Three months later, the Swiss group is back at it. At the end of March, a new telephone exchange took place between Morten Wierod and Benoit Coquart, who rejected his advances for the second time. ABB proposes the full acquisition of Legrand and its pure and simple integration. Because the Frenchman has a turnover of 9,000 million euros compared to the 29,000 million of his competitor.
ABB needs to act as its shares have lost 20% by early 2025. Its two big investment banks, UBS and JP Morgan, have been identifying targets for several months now, with Legrand at the top of the list. At that time, the Frenchman weighed 25 billion euros in the stock market, compared to ABB’s 75 billion euros. Above all, it does not have any reference shareholder, which exposes it to attacks.
The Minister of Economy interrupts
The Swiss group does not give up and becomes more aggressive. A letter, with a more official intention, was sent to Legrand’s board of directors proposing that a merger be discussed. This formal approach is rejected “unanimously” by administrators, according to one source. “ABB has not made any offer,” says a person close to the Limoges-based group. When contacted, the two groups did not want to comment on our information.
The French group then commissions two banks to help it with a possible defense strategy: BNP Paribas and Goldman Sachs. And he asks the French authorities to come to his aid. In early April, Industry Minister Marc Ferracci contacted ABB CEO Morten Wierod. Then it is the Minister of Economy who redoubles the call to the president of the Swiss group, Peter Voser, to emphasize that the Government does not want this “French industrial vessel” to pass into foreign hands.
“ABB left a bad memory in the square of Paris”
After PepsiCo’s offensive on Danone in 2005, Enel’s on Suez a year later or Couche-Tard’s on Carrefour in 2021, the government threatens to intervene. With another 5,000 employees in France in around twenty factories, Legrand is one of the oldest French industrial groups, whose origins date back to the beginning of the 20th century. The company originally manufactured porcelain before expanding into electrical equipment in 1919 (porcelain being the best-known insulator before plastic).
Public authorities have a mixed image of ABB. Its largest shareholder (14.4%) is the Swedish Wallenberg family, which owns shares in several Scandinavian companies such as Ericsson, Saab and Electrolux. It is well known for Emmanuel Macron, who decorated Jacob Wallenberg, the president of the family group, with the Legion of Honor in 2019.
Its turbines sold to Alstom in 1999 brought the French group to the brink of bankruptcy in 2004.
At the end of June, new rumors reached Legrand managers and caused panic. Meetings are organized at the highest level with the cabinets of Bercy ministers and the Treasury Department. At the end of July, the day before Legrand’s semi-annual results, Éric Lombard picked up the phone again to contact the president of ABB, who assured him, this time, that he had given up his project to buy the French group.
Source: BFM TV
